2025 was a breakout year for our community!
Three years after launch, Sylva has evolved from a bold vision into a production-grade telco cloud stack that operators now run in live networks across 10 countries. The community has grown to 35 contributing companies, 16 member companies, and 20 validated network functions, with real deployments proving that a common, open telco cloud is not just possible, but already here and scaling.
At the heart of this momentum was a major networking milestone: the introduction of Host Based Routing (HBR) and the Sylva v1.5 release, backed by new industry sponsors and amplified across both the open source and telco communities.
Host Based Routing and Sylva v1.4: Automating the Network from Inside Kubernetes
The standout announcement of the year was the introduction of Host Based Routing, formally introduced alongside Sylva v1.4. In traditional environments, Kubernetes clusters can be highly automated while the underlying data center network remains stubbornly manual, requiring switch-by-switch configuration to connect workloads and VNFs. HBR turns that model on its head.
Developed by Deutsche Telekom and built on FRR, HBR has already been running in production since 2022 across more than 300 bare-metal clusters powering workloads such as 5G Standalone Core. In 2025, Sylva embraced this proven approach and began extending it across the broader ecosystem in collaboration with Orange, 6WIND, and others.
With HBR, Kubernetes clusters integrate directly with EVPN/VXLAN fabrics via containerized routing agents and BGP. Routing becomes fully declarative and GitOps-friendly: instead of manually touching switches, operators define intent in Kubernetes, and the network adapts automatically. It’s a fundamental shift that allows telco cloud teams to manage both clusters and connectivity through the same cloud-native toolchains they already use for workloads.
The Sylva v1.4 release wrapped this innovation into a broader set of platform advances. The architecture was refactored for greater modularity and easier integration with additional Cloud Infra providers, OpenNebula, VCD, and hyperscalers. The stack became more “5G-ready” through improvements to SR-IOV, CNI bonding and a new Calico-based egress gateway. Security was strengthened with node-level firewalling and NeuVector on workload clusters, while Kunai brought a clearer operational experience by separating infrastructure and service management through a unified GUI/API. New backup and restore capabilities improved resiliency for management clusters, and tech previews for GitOps and Canonical Kubernetes paved the way for future multi-vendor flexibility. Immutable OS support via Leap Micro, running in read-only mode, underscored Sylva’s suitability for edge deployments where reliability and security are paramount.
Together, HBR and v1.4 pushed Sylva closer to a world where automation spans from the application to the underlying network fabric, all expressed declaratively.
Sylva v1.5: Flexibility, Choice, and a Stronger Reference Framework
Later in the year, Sylva v1.5 continued this trajectory by focusing on flexibility and choice. Sylva Cluster Manager was validated across multiple Kubernetes distributions, including Canonical Kubernetes, Red Hat OpenShift, RKE2, and vanilla Kubernetes. This multi-Kubernetes capability makes it easier for operators and vendors to adopt Sylva without abandoning their preferred platform, and reinforces the project’s role as a vendor-neutral reference framework rather than yet another proprietary stack.
Data protection moved forward with Velero-based backup and restore, enabling operators to define policies that align with telco-grade continuity requirements. Altogether, the v1.5 release showed that Sylva is not just growing “up” in capabilities, but “out” across the landscape of platforms and clouds that operators actually use.
New Industry Backing and Validation Momentum
Sylva also marked a new phase of ecosystem commitment. TIM joined Sylva as a Premier member, reinforcing its role as a leading operator helping to shape the stack from real-world requirements. AMD, Wind River, and Whitestack came on board as General members, adding strength in silicon, infrastructure software, and open networking integration.
Their public statements emphasized a shared view: that telco cloud must be open, multi-vendor, and standardized at the infrastructure layer if the industry is to reduce fragmentation and accelerate service delivery. Sylva provides that common reference, and the new sponsors underscored their intent to align products and solutions with the stack.
At the same time, initiatives like the opening of the Whitestack–Sylva NF Validation Center in South America demonstrated how vendors can validate their CNFs on Sylva, turning the project into both a reference architecture and a practical certification touchstone. For operators, that means a growing pool of validated NFs and mutualization of this effort; for vendors, a clearer, shared target for compatibility and performance.
Security, Sovereignty, and Sustainability
Beyond connectivity and platform choice, Sylva made meaningful progress in 2025 on security and regulatory readiness. The community continued its work on supply chain security, in line with OpenSSF guidance, and advanced a dedicated security framework that speaks directly to emerging regulations such as NIS2 and the EU Cyber Resilience Act (CRA).
Sustainability remained another key pillar. The Green Dashboard, which tracks CO₂ emissions per CNF, evolved into a tangible tool that operators can use to understand and optimize the environmental impact of their workloads.
Combined with Sylva’s European roots and focus on digital sovereignty, these efforts position the project as a reference not just for how to run telco cloud, but how to do so responsibly.
Community, Events, and Visibility
2025 also saw Sylva step more fully into the spotlight. Sylva Summit Europe, held in Amsterdam and co-located with Open Source Summit Europe, brought together operators, vendors, cloud providers, and contributors for a full day of discussions and technical deep dives. Sessions covered everything from architecture and HBR to 5G Core and Open RAN use cases, edge deployments, lifecycle automation, sustainability, and security.
The project also maintained a strong presence around Cloud Native Telco Day and related CNCF ecosystem events, helping bridge the gap between telco-grade infrastructure and the broader cloud-native community. Regular blog posts, technical updates, and LinkedIn activity gave both newcomers and long-time contributors a clear view into what the community was shipping and where it was headed next.
Looking Ahead: From Breakthroughs to Everyday Infrastructure
With HBR, v1.4, and v1.5 in place, Sylva is now turning toward the next set of challenges: edge federation across operators and domains, AI-infused operations for observability and closed-loop automation, Open RAN and 6G-ready architectures, and continued alignment with European and global regulatory priorities.
The work ahead will deepen multi-Kubernetes and multi-cloud support, broaden the validation program for CNFs and platforms, and strengthen ties with adjacent open source projects across the Linux Foundation and CNCF landscape. The goal is simple but ambitious: make a common, open, production-grade telco cloud stack so reliable and well-understood that it becomes the default foundation on which operators, vendors, and integrators build.
None of this progress in 2025 would have been possible without the operators, vendors, integrators, developers, and community champions who contributed code, designs, tests, documentation, events, and advocacy. As Sylva enters its fourth year, the message is clear: what started as a shared vision has become a living, evolving, and increasingly adopted telco cloud platform.
If you’re working on telco cloud, edge, Open RAN, or cloud-native network functions and want to help shape that future, now is a great time to join a working group, bring your platform or CNF into the validation program, or contribute your use cases and experience.
Every cloud has a Sylva lining, and in 2025, that lining became smarter, greener, and much more automated.
